AllMovie

D. Ross Lederman broke into the flicker business in 1913, as actor/ propman for such early-movie funsters as Mack Sennett and Fatty Arbuckle. From the early 1920s to the fringes of the 1950s, Lederman labored away as director of dozen of inexpensive programmers and as assistant and second-unit director for many an "A" picture. While he worked at virtually every studio, Lederman was most closely associated with Columbia. After calling it quits in the theatrical-picture business in 1950, Lederman stayed on at Columbia's television subsidiary Screen Gems, where he worked in various production capacities on such action series as Rin Tin Tin (he'd directed with the original "Rinty" back in the silent days) and Captain Midnight. Even those colleagues who found D. Ross Lederman's techniques too fast and corner-cutting for their tastes have admitted that Lederman was second to none in matching up doubles and stand-ins with closeups of the stars in action sequences and was equally adept at seamlessly combining newly shot scenes with old stock footage.